


The Coming Of The Sun

by CalamityCain



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Character Death, M/M, Marriage, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Valhalla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 16:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14501067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCain/pseuds/CalamityCain
Summary: after a lifetime of villainy, what but loneliness awaits him among the noble dead?(consider this my post-War recovery fic)





	The Coming Of The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> And here’s the [VIETNAMESE version](https://www.wattpad.com/570042990-trans-the-coming-of-the-sun-thorki-%C3%A1nh-d%C6%B0%C6%A1ng-g%E1%BA%A7n) with translation by the lovely [Kristine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristine_ptbh/pseuds/kristine_ptbh)  
> (I'm having problems with AO3 at the time of this edit, so let me know if the link's not working.)

_~_

_If there but hung a sun above us,_

_know that it would bless this union._

_As I close my eyes to this world, I shall see no darkness –_

_~_

 

In the glow of the great Valhall, where the honoured dead revel in an eternity of fighting and feasting, there is one among them who does neither. He sits silent and pale, ghost-like, resembling a denizen of Hel more than a fallen warrior.

 

He does not belong with them: kings, soldiers, shieldmaids, ready to die by the sword from birth. His very nature lends itself far more easily to survival and self-preservation. And yet here he is. While his father, whose reign had been shaped by conquest and war, is not.

 

His mother is; she who had died with a knife to the heart of the enemy. She descends upon him only occasionally. As much as they hold each other dear, she senses his strange need for isolation and for the most part respects it. She does not question his tendency to linger in corners like a shade. He is not a child, after all ( _her_ child, yes; but that is a different thing). But every once in a while, he feels her persistent presence and her cool fingers trailing against his scalp. Against his half-hearted protests she smooths the tangles from his hair until they lie once more in loose glossy waves. When he catches his reflection, he sees someone younger and more beautiful than he has any right to be.

 

This hallowed afterlife heals all. The ordeals of the past few years – the gauntness, the shadows beneath his eyes – melted away seconds after he entered these hallowed halls. He almost wishes they had remained. Instead he carries the memory of torment without being marked by it, without proof on his face save the haunted look that never left his gaze.

 

He carries the feel of a Titan’s fingers around his throat. He will bear that memory forever.

 

And yet the visage he wears now seems far too innocent to have seen massacre or madness. Wavy locks frame a marble-smooth face and a delicate mouth that draws much attention from warriors who would indulge their lust for bedsport as much as battle. _Let me warm those cold, pale lips._ their broad smiles say. _You’ll not be so ghost-like when subject to the pleasures of the flesh._ He slips silently from their grasp if they are courteous in their approach, or sticks a dagger into their sides if they are not. Partners and bedmates he has had aplenty in life. In death he finds no want of them.

 

There is only one he has ever loved, and from that one he has been torn.

 

After a year (or an unknowable length of time, which passes differently if at all in Valhalla), he asks about old One-eye.

 

 _“Father.”_ He is yet unused to the word on his tongue. But it no longer hurts; for all his wrongs, the old man with his last moments closed the divide between them.

 

Frigga smiles. “Since the dawn of the ages, he has presided over Valhalla’s fallen when he did not sit on Asgard’s throne. It’s time he had a short respite from wearing a heavy crown.”

 

 _A crown Thor would have worn far better_ – thinks Loki, before he cuts himself off. He cannot dwell on that name for long. His throat closes in on itself at the memory of electric-blue eyes he will have to wait a millennia or more to see. For a moment he thinks those monstrous fingers are on his neck again. It is hard to draw breath when the loneliness looms.

 

“You are not alone.” Can she read his mind? Perhaps, judging from the reproach in her voice. Or perhaps a mother’s intimate knowledge is inescapable. It is no matter to him. She is the only one here whose company does not drive him mad.

 

“You have wronged many in your lifetime. Yet you chose to die a hero.” Her arms were around him now. “And while I would rather have welcomed you with more grey in your hair…” He did not push them away. “You have my love, and my admiration. And you have _his._ ”

 

She gave his hand a squeeze before leaving him to melt back into the shadow, where he belonged.

 

~

 

_With my last breath, I, prince of Jotunheimr, take your name._

_With my last breath, I wed thee._

_Odinson._

 

~

 

Blood, like time, flows strangely here. When he draws it from his skin, it floats like silken threads in water. Those who died war-hungry feed their appetites by digging into each other’s throats and baying like hounds at the bursts of scarlet that cloud the air. And then their gaping wounds heal, and they fly at each other again, and again.

 

Then the smell of roasting boar tempts them away from battle, and they embrace and put away their axes, ready for the banquet of the gods.

 

Loki could die from the tedium of it all. Except, of course….

 

“It seems in death you are far less inventive. You’ve been doing that for half a year now,” remarks Fandral in passing as Loki teases his skin with a blade yet again. “You should peel yourself like an onion and watch yourself mend. Or join us on the fields – or are you still above that?”

 

“You bore me, Fandral,” Loki replies and throws his knife right into the other man’s eyeball. Fandral greets his assault with a sharp, hearty laugh – “Ha ha!” – before removing the offending blade. “I’m keeping this,” he calls.

 

Loki shrugs; he’ll conjure a new one, or carve it from the abundance of spare steel lying around in the wake of constant warring. Magic is sluggish in the hereafter, but he has time, doesn’t he?

 

Hogun, Fandral’s favourite sparring partner, says nothing but fixes him with one of those knowing stares he so dislikes. As he is crafting some needlessly cutting insult to ward off the man’s penetrating eyes, a chorus of shouts draws their attention. Another warrior has come home.

 

Loki pays this no heed at first, moved to only mild curiosity. But then he hears _that voice._ One that sends a rush of feeling through numbed nerves and fingers so sudden it hurts.

 

 _“Is he here?”_ is the first utterance he hears. _“Is my brother here?”_

 

Loki wants to leap to his feet and run to meet the booming voice and crush the lips from which it spills against his, ardently, violently, until he bleeds. Instead he sits there like a stone as love and hurt coil in his stomach like a self-devouring serpent.

 

“Too soon,” he whispers. “Too soon.”

 

Then his eyes are burning, and brimming over, and the hurt bleeds away until all that is left is a terrible, wonderful lightness; an overwhelming joy.

 

He rises on feet that are no longer made of stone. Rises to greet his brother, whose missing eye is restored and whose hair and beard gleam as gold as Valhalla’s undying light.

 

They reach for each other at the same time. A large, warm hand clasps his face that, to his amazement, is wet with tears; then again, so is Thor’s.

 

“You fool. You were supposed to live.” He is trembling without knowing why.

 

“I know. But it is done – it is over. Loki, we won the war.” He is crushed by an embrace and finds himself clinging back as fiercely.

 

“Is he dead?”

 

“Dead, and obliterated.” That voice like thunder and the warmth before rainfall is against his cheek, and everything is right. “We _won_.”

 

“Then kiss me.”

 

And Thor does.

 

Loki feels his brother's hand cradling his neck, holding him safe, and kisses back until he can breathe no longer as the eternal sun above bathes them in its gentle glow.

 

~

 

_I am yours are you are mine,_

_from here to all eternity._

 

_In this world and the next,_

_I swear to you my undying fidelity._

**Author's Note:**

> based on a very tenuous theory (that i naturally clung to like a liferaft) that Loki as good as wed himself to Thor in his last moments
> 
> http://taranoire.tumblr.com/post/173427004622/can-we-please-talk-about-how-loki-said-he-was
> 
> http://thorduna.tumblr.com/post/173428354470/toomanylokifeels-yo-but-odin-adopting-loki


End file.
